


it counts

by alittleonedge



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 05:25:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16717319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittleonedge/pseuds/alittleonedge





	it counts

Does it count if they’re on a case and she took the long way around?

She doesn’t actually need his approval. She doesn’t actually feel all that old, nor does she regret the way she’s aged. It’s a feeling she’s perhaps “supposed” to feel, and therefore maybe Mulder would understand that approach.

But she regrets it a little bit, now. She regrets entertaining certain insecurities, letting herself doubt her place in his life and his in her’s. She regrets that tone in his voice and that look on his face when she realizes she’s made him question and doubt himself for a moment too. She regrets not just sliding into bed and onto his hips and asking with her body for him to love her like she hasn’t let him—like she used to love him even when she wasn’t certain he’d live long enough to be with her in this forever they’ve created on a pull-out motel bed.

She’s doing it now, though, and she supposes that where you end up is what really counts. She also counts the number of times she can roll her hips with him inside her before he squeezes her thighs and shuts his eyes into a deep breath that expands his chest and belly, her hands rising with his body and her legs loosening their grip around him. The magic number seems to be nine.

She likes the look of her own hands on his chest. Her nails are clipped even and shiny with clear polish, paler than the skin below them. They get dragged by lazy arms down his torso while she breathes and resists the squeeze of her muscles around him. She sees flashes of the same memory repeated through the years, her nails red and leaving blazing trails in the heat of July, in the backseat of a stolen Oldsmobile in the desert. She sees them blunt and dull, but delicate, tracing his nipples and rocking her hips to the tune of her own failure of losing another child at the hospital. She sees them black that one time she entertained his Halloween fetish, back before she ever thought she’d be thinking of a baby in a little pumpkin costume being hand-fed by his grandmother.

His hands cover hers before they travel any lower than his ribs. He still doesn’t move or encourage her to return to her delicious rolling. He raises her right hand, her dominate one, the one she uses to hold his when they walk, the one she uses to grip the hard length of him after she’s undressed him. Palm to palm, he watches their hands hover. When he wraps his hand around hers, he brings it to his lips and counts each finger with a kiss, before laying her hand along his cheek.

She used to play games with him. She used to make him keep his eyes closed, prone and laying on his back. She never knew if he peeked, but she also knew that Mulder was a connoisseur of delayed gratification. Perhaps they both were. Undressing quickly, she would slip into some new bra, some new lip color, something new for him to touch or put in his mouth or in his hands. He’d later makes jokes about being her something old, and then lamely joke about his balls being the something blue.

But she would hold her hands over his face and eyes, settling on his hips. Sometimes she would smoosh his face a little, lean in and kiss him for his squirming and make him keep his eyes closed longer. Sometimes she just rubbed his face until he relaxed and the lines smoothed before she would tell him to open his eyes again.

Now, she leans forward to cup his face and rubs her thumbs along the apples of his cheeks. She must look at him like she’s missed him because that’s how he’s mirroring her. Her fingertips go feathering across his forehead. Her right index finger takes the long dive down his nose and to his lips. Sitting back on him, she pushes her index and middle fingers into his mouth and he lazily runs his tongue along them.

She’s pulsing around him in a way she can’t help or stave off anymore. He’s groaning low around her skin. When his body lifts to hers, she starts again, keeping her balance with her other hand low on his body with his abdominals flexing and hardening beneath her fingertips. She wants to touch herself now, wants to come before he does, wants to put her hand to better use, to let him reminisce on her hands and nails of all shades, filtering through his brain as he remembers all the times she’s let him watch her.

But he won’t let go of her fingers. She imagines them on her clit and lets out a whimper. She whispers his name with the implication that she won’t leave, ever, if he just lets her slip her wet fingers out of his mouth. She feels his teeth compress her skin, his tongue tickle the webbing between her fingers, and she loses count of her swirling hips somewhere beyond thirteen.

His mouth opens and her hand spills out onto his chest, her whole body falling back with the effort she had put into pulling away.

He had asked her once, if it counted if she had to touch herself to make herself come, when he was perfectly capable. It counts, she had said and pushed his ready hands away.

He’s watching her now, just as he had then, with his chin tucked to his chest and mouth open, unable to process the sight of his saliva coating her fingers, and her juices coating his cock, and everything sliding and slapping in tandem, without making a helpless sound in the back of his throat.

Does it count if I tell him I love him before he’s ready?

She does, and it definitely counts.


End file.
